The Hours - Michael Cunningham
So I've finally got around to reading this book, which means we can finally go see the movie, now that it's no longer in most theaters. Such is life.
Like Doug, I find it hard to imagine how to portray all the language from the book in a movie, but I'm still interested in seeing it. Cunningham has a way of letting you inside the minds of his characters, so even as they are doing one thing or saying something, inside their head there's another voice questioning, plotting, criticizing and then regretting the criticism. The book does a good job (in my uneducated opinion) of depicting the mental processes of people who are neurotic (from a milder, somewhat quirky sort to a sparrows-are-speaking-Greek-to-me sort). My only objection is that it seemed everyone in the book was a little off, mentally—is this Cunningham's belief, that everyone is a little neurotic? Or perhaps that they tend to clump together socially?
It's not a happy book, for the most part—it has to do with thoughts of suicide, and the choices that we make or are made for us. It deals with the sort of life in which (or maybe, the sort of person for whom) living is not clearly the better option.
Fed to jhliu's brain | May 22, 2003
